From Boring Brown To Beautiful Blue: A File Cabinet Gets A Makeover with Chalk Paint #diy

From Boring Brown To Beautiful Blue: A File Cabinet Gets A Makeover with Chalk Paint #diy

In the midst of moving and chaos, I needed to take a break from the endless boxes and paint. Painting helps me relax and the pain in my clenched jaw told me that I definitely needed to chill. I’ve had the file cabinet in the photo above—forever. I’m talking 15 years easy. Since I knew that I wasn’t parting with it, I decided to turn it into a bin for craft storage. My collection of chalk paints and Mod Podge need a place to hang. My old paper bills and documents were evicted and shredded.

Time for some paint therapy….

Step 1. Remove the drawers and drawer pulls. Clean the inside and outside of the cabinet with mild cleaner.

Step 2. Fill the screw holes {from the drawer pulls} with wood filler {I used DecoArt}. I used a cotton swab and my fingers to push that wood filler in there. No fancy equipment needed.

This photo shows the inside of the cabinet.

On the outside of the cabinet, I covered the holes with paint tape so the wood filler wouldn’t go through the front.

The photos aren’t the greatest because I was working in the middle of the night and I used my iPhone to take the pics and I had wood filler on my hands. You get the idea 😉

Step 8. Line the drawers with scrapbook paper and seal with Mod Podge matte.

Step 9. Glue old porcelain faucet handles onto the sides of the cabinet. I’m going to use these to hang my embroidery hoops. I use E6000 to glue everything on–better than superglue in my opinion.

Step 10. Attempt to get a decent photo even though it’s been dark and rainy out for 2 days straight.

A few more views of the finished makeover….

For those of you that are interested, here are the colors I used:

Let’s take a final look at the transformation {even if the photos are not the greatest}:

All that painting helped me relax and I truly love working with DecoArt’s chalk paints. They’re so easy to use and almost fool-proof! I now have a beautiful cabinet to store all of my creative goodies.

Do you like to repurpose items around your household? What do you have a hard time parting with?

About Kim Dickerson (Winter + Sparrow)

Kim is the creator and founder of winter + sparrow. She's been blogging since 2009 and loves to create. In her spare time, Kim likes to explore Virginia + Washington D.C., go thrift store shopping, read historical fiction books, herd cats, and watch British TV. Kim is a mom, grandma, wife, and multiple sclerosis warrior. She's also a loser. A loser of 100 lbs that is! Want to find out how she did it? Click here to learn more and discover the interesting field Kim previously worked in.